Sun Unleashes Major Solar Flare at Earth

[Winston]

https://www.space.com/27110-sun-unleashes-big-solar-flare.html

Excerpt:

A big storm erupted on the sun today (Sept. 10), and Earth was in the crosshairs.

The sun unleashed an X-class solar flare — the most powerful type — at 1:45 p.m. EDT (1745 GMT) today from an Earth-facing sunspot known as Active Region 2158, which also fired off another intense solar flare yesterday. Both space weather events were captured on camera by NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

2014-09-11 05:01 UTC A Pair of CMEs

G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storms remain in the forecast for September 12th as a result of the coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with the R1 (Minor) solar flare observed on the 9th. The latest WSA-Enlil model run has the CME associated with yesterday's R3 (Strong) solar flare arriving mid to late day on that same day. A G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm Watch has been issued for September 13th due to the combined influence of these two events with G1 (Minor) storming anticipated to continue into September 14th. In addition, the S1 (Minor) solar radiation storm that is in progress as a result of the eruption yesterday is expected to persist for the next few days. Keep in mind that the forecast periods listed are in Universal Time so aurora watchers in the northern U.S. should be looking for possible activity both Thursday and Friday nights. Stay tuned for updates.

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

I wish I could just hop on a plane and go somewhere to watch the Auroras...

I saw a cool free movie on-demand this weekend. It is called Sunshine. It starts off with a completely flawed premise that the sun is dying and growing dim, and a team of astronauts is going to the sun to deliver a stellar bomb to restart it and save all life on earth. Once you get past that ridiculous idea, it's an enjoyable movie. There are lots of stunning visual images. Being so close to the sun makes for a very perilous environment with everything in danger of being incinerated if the shielding and filters fail. There are a lot of interesting philosophical themes too. At the end the movie goes a bit off the rails with a bizarre twist, and it turns into almost a different kind of movie with some mild horror type moments, and the whole style becomes confusing, but I still liked it. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I'd say give it a chance. Right after the movie, all about being right at the sun, there was a show on Discovery about how the sun works, which was also very interesting and full of cool visual imagery. I feel like I got plenty of sun that night! Anyway, I know this is all off topic, but the solar flare story reminded me of it.